The room rejoices as the hopes of those struggling to survive from Eboli onwards roll into the southern abyss. Differentiated autonomy became law on a night full of tensions. A night filled with breaths of secessionism that pave the way for even more marked disparities and inequalities.
It is the law that will divide Italy and which was conceived in the Northern League laboratory of that North which has always claimed its industrial, economic, health and employment superiority. A measure that will end up definitively walling up the stone tomb in which the “southern question” rests and which, in the meantime, has already opened up dangerous rifts within the majority itself.
Cracks that had already appeared in the hot days of the electoral campaign and which after the Montecitorio battle appeared clearer within the center-right alignments. Roberto Occhiuto, center-right governor and, above all, national deputy secretary of Forza Italia, reiterated all his doubts related to the rush to approve the text without verifying its mechanisms.
«The text of the bill on differentiated autonomy approved by the Chamber has certainly improved – thanks above all to the work of the Forza Italia ministers and the national secretary, Antonio Tajani – compared to the one proposed months ago by Minister Calderoli. For the most important matters, agreements between the State and the Regions cannot be ratified without first having quantified and financed the essential levels of performance. But for this very reason it is the method used to vote in forced stages is difficult to understand – rejecting possible further improvements – this provision: in doing so the bill seemed like a flag of a single political force, in a climate that represented this rule as divisive in Parliament and in the country. I don’t know if the minimal electoral advantages that the centre-right will have in the North, where presumably the citizens before autonomy would have preferred to have less taxes and less bureaucracy, will compensate for the opposition and concerns that the centre-right voters have in the South.
This rule needed to be further explored and the discussion had to take place in a calm manner: we would thus have had the opportunity to explain it better in the southern regions. I understand the reasons of the Calabrian deputies of Forza Italia – Francesco Cannizzaro, Giuseppe Mangialavori And Giovanni Arruzzolo – who decided not to vote for this law. It was their choice, which I shared. I fear that the national center-right has made a mistake, which it will soon realize.”